Snap Out of It

As social media changes the way we experience vacation photos, there's no
better time to improve the shots themselves. Lesson one: Focus on the details

ENLARGE

THE TELLING DETAIL | Diane Cook and Len Jenshel's photo of Arizona's Monument Valley Navajo Tribal Park would be just another landscape shot if they hadn't included the open car door.
Diane Cook & Len Jenshel

By

Kevin Sintumuang

Updated March 9, 2013 12:01 a.m. ET

BIG TRIP AHEAD? Then you'll need a big camera.

At least that's how I thought one became a great travel photographer back in 1996. This was pre-Instagram. Pre-iPhone. Pre-digital-camera revolution. I was 17 and on my first backpacking adventure across Europe. The camera was a NikonNINOY1.07% N50, a hulking, professional-looking SLR. I didn't know what most of the buttons did. Still don't, actually. Like many young folk who travel across the Atlantic for the first time, I figured that I would not only find myself, I'd take National Geographic-level photographs of the canals of Amsterdam at night, old men smoking at Parisian cafes and children cavorting around fountains in quaint Roman piazzas.

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My inaugural European sojourn was formative and eye opening (the cheese really is better over there!), but it nearly killed my travel-photography dreams. I shot only two rolls of film over the course of two months. My equipment was just too cumbersome to carry with me, and I was too self-conscious about my "art." In my quest for frame-worthy shots, I came away with a handful of boring ones: A street. A bridge. A church tower. An empty field. Another church tower.

I still managed to fall in love with travel that summer and vowed to document my subsequent trips with photographs that didn't look like bad postcards. I kept my cameras small. (For the Flickr nerds: My favorite film point-and-shoot circa 2001 was the pocketable Pentax IQZoom 120mi.) I shot more loosely and generously, sometimes tearing through several rolls of film a day. I wouldn't consider what I captured particularly meaningful to anyone except myself. But years later, flipping through the mix of matte and glossy 4-by-6 prints, I experienced my biggest travel-photography epiphany: The more you document seemingly insignificant details on a trip, the more vivid the memories.

Interactive: Be Well-Equipped

These days, I approach travel photography as if I were making a shot list for a documentary film. The plane ticket. The boarding gate. The letterpress stationery in my hotel room. The bellhop. The local currency. On their own, these make for boring pictures, but the way we view travel photographs has changed. The one framed "perfect" photo of the Trevi Fountain is no longer the trophy. It's about the slide show set to the Steely Dan song that was playing the morning you left your hotel at sunrise and made your way to the airport. Or those random Apple TV-generated collages of snapshots cascading down your flat screen when you get home from work. Or the triptychs you can create using the PicFrame app on your smartphone. (A much better use of your time during a commute than playing "Angry Birds.") In these contexts, it's the impromptu detail shots that best evoke a trip.

Even scanning through vacation photos in your FacebookFB-1.26% Timeline or seeing a grid of photos you've taken during a road trip can bring back that time and place better than most single photographs can. A White Ford Mustang Convertible + a Sunset + a Maui Plate Lunch = the strangely addictive smell of the coconut sunblock you used.

Technology has not changed travel photography entirely for the good. Do I still shoot an overwhelming number of landscapes that look like they could be anywhere between New Jersey and Switzerland? Sure. Do I snap photos of landmarks that are identical to what comes up when you do a Google image search? Yes.

Though I'm obviously to blame, I also fault the casualness of iPhone photography and Instagram (especially Instagram). Photographs are so easy to take and so ubiquitous that we're neglecting the craft of capturing images. (Before long, Google Glass, the high-tech glasses with a built-in camera, will let us take a photo of whatever we happen to be looking at.) While technology has imbued the minutia of our experience with meaning, it's also turning us into lazy photographers.

I now realize that the key to memorable travel photography is a two-pronged approach: 1) focusing on the details and 2) taking the time to up my game, whether it's learning a few tricks of the trade for composition and lighting or investing in gear that gives me more control than a standard point-and-shoot.

Because, in the end, better photographs translate into stronger memories—even if it's just a shot of your dented rental car.

—Mr. Sintumuang is the editor of GQ.com

Shoot to Thrill

Digital technology enables endless snapping, but that's no excuse for taking bad photos. Here, some timeless tips from five pros

Landscapes

Advice for capturing a sense of place, from Diane Cook and Len Jenshel, contributing photographers to National Geographic

Photograph experiences rather than landmarks. If you're photographing some building or monument that's been shot a million times, don't try to take a better picture than the pros. Make the shot your own, whether by using a reflection in a window or a puddle. With a travel photo, it's about bringing home your experience.

Wait and see. The most important thing is to have patience and not to be attached to expectations. For a story we did on the Na Pali Coast for National Geographic, we got to the Kalalau Lookout just as the fog was rolling in. Tourists drove up and complained about the clouds blocking their view. We told them to wait it out, but they got back into their cars and left. Sure enough, 15 minutes later, a double rainbow appeared and we got the picture that opened the spread in the magazine.

Use the flash wisely. We often see people photographing a distant landscape with a flash. Don't waste your battery; the flash will only light about 10 feet. The time to use a flash is when it's sunny out and you want to eliminate shadows on faces.

ENLARGE

LOOKING UP | Mr. Kashi's eye contact with a shopkeeper in Klong Toei, Thailand, makes for a more compelling photo.
Ed Kashi/VII

People

How to take pics with palpable personality, according to photojournalist Ed Kashi

Embrace eye contact. Professional journalists often want the camera to seem invisible—we'll edit out photos in which anyone is looking at the camera. But if you're a tourist, it doesn't matter if the cute kids are posing or the old fisherman is looking at you. Just preserve the moment and show where you've been without the professional's burden of trying not to be noticed.

Go incognito easily. If you do want to be inconspicuous, use a smartphone app that lets you snap the shutter with the device's volume button, like Camera+. It'll look like you're just adjusting something on your phone even though you just took a photo.

Be engaged. Whether you're a tourist or a hard-core journalist, try to interact with people and connect with them any way you can. Ask about their lives. Spend time with them. It makes for richer photos.

Food

Bloggers Tara O'Brady of Seven Spoons and Ashley Rodriguez of Not Without Salt give a few tricks for snapping appetizing photos

Photograph hungry. Look at whatever you're shooting greedily. Doing so will help you zero in on the details of a dish that make it enticing, say, the golden ooze of a poached egg. —Ms. O'Brady

Keep it focused. Remove elements from the frame that might be distracting—extraneous cutlery, napkins. Experiment with framing, too. It can entirely change how a dish is perceived. Centering often conveys a classic formality, while an asymmetrical composition can give a sense of looseness and approachability. —Ms. O'Brady

Dine by natural light. At restaurants, I'll request a table by the window to increase the amount of natural light. And have your nicest meal at lunch, when the light is better. —Ms. Rodriguez

Illuminate creatively. If it's dark in the restaurant, have your dining companion use a flashlight app to light the plate from above. It's better than using the flash. I've even used white napkins to bounce light onto the dish. —Ms. Rodriguez

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